‘Brilliant’ hacker gets five years behind bars for helping North Korea evade sanctions with crypto
‘Brilliant’ American hacker who invented WikiScanner, 39, is sentenced to five years for helping North Korea evade US sanctions by using cryptocurrency
Hacker and cryptos guru Virgil Griffith, 39, coached North Koreans in 2019 visitHe pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate sanctions against PyongyangGriffith will pay $100,000 and serve 63 months – and it could have been 20 yearsTech pro advised North Koreans on how to evade global sanctions using cryptoDuring trial he was kept in notorious NYC gang-run jail with Ghislaine Maxwell
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A gifted American hacker and cryptocurrency guru has been jailed for five years after helping North Korea evade U.S. sanctions.
Virgil Griffith, 39, who trained at Caltech advised more than 100 people how to use blockchain technology to get around international restrictions at a crypto conference in Pyongyang three years ago. The group included business men and several people who are thought to have worked for the North Korean government.
He pled guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The law prohibits U.S. citizens from exporting goods, services or technology to sanctioned countries, including North Korea.
Virgil Griffith giving a presentation in North Korea in 2019 according to the Justice Department who included it in a sentencing memorandum with elements redacted
Griffiths (left and right in selfies posted to Facebook) went to North Korea despite a U.S. refusal
Griffith spoke at the conference even after the U.S. government denied his request to travel there.
A well-known hacker who established Wikipedia tool WikiScanner, Griffith also developed ‘cryptocurrency infrastructure and equipment inside North Korea,’ prosecutors wrote in court papers.
At the 2019 conference, he advised the group on how to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions and achieve independence from the global banking system.
The U.S. and the U.N. Security Council have imposed increasingly tight sanctions on North Korea in recent years to try to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The 39-year-old, pictured in another Facebook selfie, wished to promote peace, lawyers said
The U.S. government amended sanctions against North Korea in 2018 to prohibit ‘a U.S. person, wherever located’ from exporting technology to North Korea.
Prosecutors said Griffith acknowledged his presentation amounted to a transfer of technical knowledge to conference attendees.
‘Griffith is an American citizen who chose to evade the sanctions of his own country to provide services to a hostile foreign power,’ prosecutors wrote.
‘He did so knowing that power – North Korea – was guilty of atrocities against its own people and has made threats against the United States citing its nuclear capabilities.’
Defense attorney Brian Klein described Griffith as a ‘brilliant Caltech-trained scientist who developed a curiosity bordering on obsession’ with North Korea.
‘He viewed himself – albeit arrogantly and naively – as acting in the interest of peace,’ Klein said.
‘He loves his country and never set out to do any harm.’
Klein added that he was disappointed with the 63-month prison sentence but ‘pleased the judge acknowledged Virgil’s commitment to moving forward with his life productively, and that he is a talented person who has a lot to contribute.’
The maximum sentence for those who knowingly violate U.S. sanctions is 20 years.
A self-described ‘disruptive technologist,’ Griffith became something of a tech-world enfant terrible in the early 2000s.
In 2007, he created WikiScanner, a tool that aimed to unmask people who anonymously edited entries in Wikipedia, the crowdsourced online encyclopedia.
WikiScanner essentially could determine the business, institutions or government agencies that owned the computers from which some edits were made.
It quickly identified businesses that had sabotaged competitors´ entries and government agencies that had rewritten history, among other findings.
‘I am quite pleased to see the mainstream media enjoying the public-relations disaster fireworks as I am,’ Griffith told the Associated Press in 2007.
Klein previously said Griffith cooperated with the FBI and ‘helped educate law enforcement’ about the so-called dark web, a network of encrypted internet sites that allow users to remain anonymous.
